Every Flavoured Beans
by Amber-and-Ash
Summary: One shots and plot bunnies in the Harry Potter Universe. Most Recent: After the war, Harry discovers the Wizarding World is larger than the fairground mirror of middle-class England he'd been exposed to.
1. Purity of Soul

**Purity of Soul**

******Disclaimer:** I own nothing, make no money from anything, and am writing this purely for personal enjoyment.

**Summary****: **'Dark' and 'Light' magic don't mean 'powerful' and 'weak'. Barty Crouch's attempt to sabotage Harry back-fires.

* * *

Barty was cleaning out the accumulated detritus of previous Defence of Dark Arts professors, when he came across a perfect solution to a problem that had been worrying him. He would have to instruct Harry Potter well enough to win the tri-wizard tournament, but he didn't want to hand the brat any tools that he might use against the Dark Lord. Not that he doubted the Dark Lord's prowess in any way of course, but Barty didn't think that He should be subjected to irritants that Barty could prevent.

He had resigned himself to just being heavy handed with the cheating, but this, this was perfect. An intact copy of 'The Magic of your Soul', the founding document of a pacifist movement that had a brief resurgence in popularity after the war with Grindlewald. It was hard to believe that even in the decades of ineptitude, Dumbledore had been forced to hire a Soul Washer, but perhaps the unknown instructor had merely taken an academic interest in it. It was a long shot, but perhaps he could convert Potter. The philosophy wouldn't cripple the Potter boy's performance in the tournament – all the challenges would be against non-humans – but if he could get the boy to believe this twaddle, however, the boy would hesitate to strike against the Dark Lord or any of the other Death Eaters.

He could do this. It just had to be presented properly. He dug through the stack to find other books of the same subject matter, and started plotting.

* * *

Harry Potter made his way to the new teacher's desk as he had been instructed. He wouldn't have said that he was nervous, exactly, but he was on edge, and Moody's wandering eye wasn't helping things.

"Grab a chair, Potter, this will take a while."

"Am I in any trouble, sir?"

"Not at all, I just have something I think you need to hear."

Harry paused just as he was sitting down. Was this going to be another Sirius Black situation? He usually only found out the stuff he needed to hear too late for it to do much good. He sat down abruptly, ignoring the sharp edge of the wood as it bit into his thighs.

"Potter, I'm going to let you know about something that will get me into a lot of trouble if it's discovered. I'm putting my faith in you being a trustworthy person who deserves to make his own decisions."

Harry squirmed, uncomfortable both with the praise and the secrecy. But if he needed to know... he nodded, not committing himself to a spoken promise. It seemed that was good enough, because Moody continued.

"There are ... certain risks to practising magic that are kept from children because we do not want them to become scared of their own magic. It's usually quite safe because a child will never perform powerful enough magic to do themselves any harm. In fact, most adults never will either, so we make no great attempt to inform them even once they are old enough to understand. You, on the other hand – you performed a corporal Patronus more powerful than any ever recorded."

Harry frowned. Did everyone know about that, or had Dumbledore told Moody specifically? How much exactly did he know? But that was a problem he'd have to worry about later. Now he had to concentrate on what Moody was trying to warn him about.

"You mean there are... side effects? That when I perform magic, I'm hurting myself? I haven't noticed anything."

"It's not all magic, and it isn't instant. Look, I'm afraid we don't have the time to go into it now, not without someone becoming suspicious. But I do have some books that will explain it all."

Harry followed his gaze to a small pile of books. It was forbidden knowledge, but someone had written books about it? _Many_ people had written books about it? Something wasn't making much sense here.

"I'll give them to you if you promise to keep them hidden from everyone. I think you need this information, but I cannot justify exposing it to other kids, and the other adults won't agree with me."

Well, more information was better than less information after all. He'd take the books.

"I promise, sir. I won't let them see the books." _But I might tell them what's in them if I think they ought to know,_ finished Harry to himself. He wasn't going to let a teacher come between him and his friends.

* * *

Harry did his best to read it all, starting with the top book, but the writing was old-fashioned, and the tone a little too fanciful for his tastes. Reading for the sake of pure knowledge was more of a chore than a pleasure. He wasn't Hermione, after all, and he'd been forbidden from handing them to her. From his skimming, all the book seemed to be was some rhetoric about how dark magic was bad. Harry flipped through the pages, looking for something interesting. He knew there had to be more to it, or Moody wouldn't have smuggled them to him. Here was something a little more promising – a spell to project the colour of the soul into a crystal ball. Harry hopped off his bed and made his way down to the common room. He wasn't paying much attention when he borrowed one of the practice crystal balls of the shelf.

"Divination, Harry? I thought you were supposed to be studying dice throws. You're not messing around up there, are you?"

Harry was feeling guilty about keeping this from Hermione, but the accusation in her tone put his back up. He finished his homework on time, and it wasn't really any of her business if he was 'messing around up there'.

"I'm going to use the results of the ball reading to compare to the dice, if you must know."

Hermione sniffed and returned to her own work and Harry took the ball back up to his bed. He was irritated with himself at the unnecessary lie. Now he would actually have to make comparisons and add it to his homework. He didn't put it past Hermione to go into his bag to check.

But first, what he had fetched it for. He closed and locked his curtains, safe in the knowledge that his dorm mates would assume he was wanking and leave him alone. He followed the steps in the book carefully. The process was more like a ritual than a spell, and the close confines and growing stuffiness of his bed made things even more difficult than they should have been. He had to restart several times, but at last he completed it successfully. He stared at the ball which was now filled with a uniform grey mist. Here and there strands of lighter and darker smoke floated through it. The coloured sections were denser, and easier to spot. Harry frowned at the darker strands. He'd been kind of hoping for some glimmeringly pure ball.

Moody had said he'd been concerned because of that Protonus, so his next step would be to test that. He didn't have the same sheer determination as he had had That Night, but he pumped as much power into the spell as he could. The enormous stag filled and overfilled the small space allowed for it on the bed, pressing down on Harry. It snorted and shook itself, inadvertently landing a hoof into Harry's unprotected stomach. With a distressed hhmph it disappeared. Harry lay there, simply breathing. Somehow, despite having already seen it, he hadn't expected it to be that large. He certainly hadn't expected it to be actively irritated at being summoned in such a confined space. Perhaps he should call it out again later and apologise?

But for now, he had an experiment too complete. He went through the little ritual again. His expectant smile slid off his face. The grey mist was exactly the same colour, but now there was another black swirl, right in the centre. Black! A Patronus was not a dark spell, it couldn't be. It just couldn't. He picked up the books, this time going for the indexes. After four failures, there was an entry for Patronus in 'True Grey'.

Determining Dark and Light is a waste of your time

Many categories have been proposed to explain why a particular spell is leaves a dark or light residue. Some of the better known are:

Destructive (vanishing charm) versus constructive (water fount charm)

Emotional (patronus charm) versus analytical (repairing charm)

Targeting (freezing charm) versus atmospheric (cooling charm)

I'm sure you can spot the problems immediately. Is the repelling charm dark because it's destructive, or light because it's atmospheric? Is the growth charm light because it's constructive, or dark because it's emotional? By the time you are done with it, you will probably have to resort to simply memorising a list of the spells you commonly use.

If you have already gone to all this effort, then I apologise on behalf of my more pedantic colleagues. You have wasted your time.

In the short run, the balance of your soul is simply not going to affect you. Short-term symptoms (recklessness, moodiness and secretiveness) still take weeks to manifest. The more serious symptoms (lack of empathy, megalomania and paranoia) take years. So, yes, casting exactly equal number of dark and light spells will prevents most of the symptoms. But this is like saying that paralysing and numbing a broken bone prevents most of the symptoms. A temporary stop-gap should never come to take place of actual healing – perform your soul cleansing rituals thoroughly and regularly.

Oh. Harry felt his face flush a little. It wasn't black as in 'dark and evil magic', it was black as in 'leaves a black mark'. No better or worse than 'leaves a white mark'. Something he'd have known if he'd bothered to actually read the books, he assumed. He cleared the area and settled in to read 'True Grey'. It was slimmer than the others, and translated into a more modern, conversational tone. Perhaps this one he'd actually be able to get through.

* * *

'True Grey' detailed a number of rituals he could use for different purposes, from a wandless charm intended to be cast during a break in the battle, to a multi-day affair designed to treat victims of magical accidents. None, to Harry's great relief, involved getting naked and dancing in the moonlight. He had found himself a real, genuine, ritual room, apparently from back when Magical Rituals was still an option in Hogwarts, and made his preparations. He hadn't bothered to try and conceal what he was doing from the castle or the professors – for a start, he wasn't technically doing anything wrong, and for another, the professors had never given much indication of caring about what students did or didn't do.

Since it was his first, Harry had simply shrugged and picked the deepest cleanse that could be performed alone. In retrospect, it might have been wiser to use less extensive ones more frequently to purify his soul slowly.

Step one involved some chanting and gesturing that he could read from the book, but step two required him to put out all the lights. The room seemed infinitely large, and the echoes from his voice made him feel like he was delivering his lines to an unseen audience. At the exact time the book had promised, a glowing representation of his soul materialised , lighting the room no further than his hands. He had to turn his eyes away from the white and black threads to stop himself from watching them. He could imagine himself withering away here as his gaze was trapped in their hypnotic movement. But with the preparations complete, it was time to start the cleansing itself.

The book had warned of discomfort, but if this was discomfort, he wondered what the book considered real pain. As he struggled to breath, flat on his back on the cold stones, the soul-mist begin to distort. It looked almost like it was tearing. Paralysed by the agony, his thoughts too sluggish to even think of doing anything, he watched as a whole portion of soul-mist separated from the rest. It was sucked away with a high-pitched screech, as if his soul itself screaming in pain. Harry was sore and frightened and so very, very, tired. The lights started dimming, and he could not tell if it was a sign of the ritual completing or his eye-sight beginning to fade. In a second, it no longer mattered as his eyes inexorably closed.

* * *

Pettigrew listened to the eldritch shrieks from his hiding place. There was no way he was going to make a target of himself by entering the room while his master was in pain. Once it was once again silent, he waited, and then waited a little more. A buzz reminded him that it was now the Master's regular feeding time, and he had run out of excuses to remain away. He crept into the room slowly, then slightly faster as there was no reaction. Eventually he was right on top of the creature and their was still no reaction. Drawing on half-remembered lessons, he cast a diagnostic charm.

Heart failure. The child/creature/lord had died of heart failure.

The Dark Lord was a spirit once again, and without even the strength to possess someone, or else Pettigrew himself would already have been taken. If the past was any indicator, it would take the Dark Lord a decade or more before he'd regain the power to protect Pettigrew, and after all of this, the Dark Lord would probably be more likely to kill Pettigrew than save him. Pettigrew heard a noise and spun, casting his spell before he even finished turning. Nagani writhed, but was unable to throw off the ropes. Threaten to eat him, did it? Thought it was better than him, just because it was a favourite of the Master, did it? Well, before he went on the run again, he was going to take the time to show the snake just what a wizard could do.

* * *

Over the next few days Harry spent most of his free time asleep, but eventually he felt recovered enough to return to the books. If Hermione had known about this, she would have yelled at him for hours about jumping into things unprepared. Of course, if she'd known about it, he wouldn't have been unprepared in the first place. She'd have devoured all of these, and gone back to the library to look for more.

Actually, now that he thought about it, that might be a plan. Moody has said it was 'discouraged', after all, not 'forbidden'. And even if it was forbidden, there was a whole section for that. At the first opportunity, he made his way to the library. His heart almost jumped out his chest when he found two books about Soul Purification in an obscure corner, right at the bottom. Not tantalisingly out of reach in the reserved section, just hard to get to and unattractive. One was even a duplicate of the books he had – one of the more impenetrable ones, but Hermione wouldn't care about that. These were two books he could give her without breaking his promise or endangering Moody.

"Something that might interest you," he said, dumping the two books in her arms.

"Thanks, I guess," she said, and Harry cringed at her tone. "You know, I might like reading, but I don't go around collecting books like chocolate frog cards. Don't you think you'd better find the owner?"

"They're library books, Hermione. They're due back in three weeks. And I thought the _topic_ sounded interesting."

"So you've read them, then?"

"Well, I tried. The books are a little beyond me."

"This better not be undone homework, Harry Potter."

"It isn't. Look, just give them a try. You might like them."

She was still glaring at him suspiciously, but he took some comfort in the fact that she put them away neatly.

"If I have time," she said, and he was forced to let it go at that. He couldn't tell her why it was important without giving away everything he was trying not to give away. But this was Hermione. Leave it in her general vicinity long enough, and she'd read even the bus timetable.

* * *

Barty Crouch obeyed orders, and his orders had been to remain unsuspicious. But he hadn't been contacted in weeks, and his Dark Mark was _fading. _Well, he'd need more ingredients for the polyjuice soon, and if he was out of the castle anyway...

He arranged for some leave, and took the most circuitous route he could – fortunately he would not have to explain the paranoia. He wasn't looking forward to the punishment he would certainly receive for this, but a few hours in his Master's company would be compensation enough. The smell wasn't enough to raise any alarm bells, although he did intend to have a few words with Pettigrew about disposing of the bodies more promptly. No, it was the silence. Normally, there was always something. The slithering of Nagini through the passages, the rapid stutter-click of Pettigrew as he scurried around, the rush and crackling of the fire. The Master wouldn't have abandoned this place without warning him, would He? Even if he had failed the Master somehow, the Master would not have simply deserted him. Barty caught sight of Nagini, and run the last remaining steps.

He collapsed to his knees, for a long time refusing to believe the truth. His Master and Nagini had been slain, betrayed by the person that should have served them the most faithfully. Grimly, he drew his wand and prepared to swear a blood oath, here in the sight of this most despicable of treacheries. Barty would not rest until he had tracked down Peter Pettigrew and extracted his due punishment.

* * *

Harry found what he was looking for after he'd stopped looking for it. Instead of the answer being in the warnings about which rituals to avoid, it was in the description of which rituals were required.

As may happen from time to time, a twin is not be fully formed within the womb of his mother. The magic may cause this twin to abandon his own partial body, and any parts attached to the surviving twin will slough away within the first few weeks of birth. At this time, it is important that a soul-cleansing be performed to encourage the soul of the deceased twin to pass beyond. If the dead soul is allowed to remain in the body of the surviving twin, it may gain its own consciousness, desires and potentially even magic, contaminating the surviving twin. The ritual should ideally be performed within the first week as the soul-cleansing becomes increasingly painful as the twin is permitted to develop.

_I had a twin_, thought Harry. _I had a twin, and I just killed him._

Hard on the heels of this realisation was another. _No-one can know_. Harry was aware of how quickly general sentiment could turn against him, and the murder of his own brother would be a powerful weapon in the hands of his enemy. But he wished there was just one person he could consult. One person he could confess to. One person who could tell him how he could properly honour and mourn his brother. He couldn't even go to Moody, as all their defence lectures were being covered by Snape.

He kept an eye on Hermione, and went with her to return the books to the library.

"What do you think?" he asked, trying to strive for casualness.

"Oh, the Soul Cleaning? It was actually quite fascinating."

Hermione would be his one person. Relief and fear battled for dominance in him.

"I mean," she continued, "we're always presented with the rational face of the wizarding world, you know? Weird to think there are whole cults out there that make Trelawny seem sensible and level-headed."

"Wait, you think Soul Cleaning is some sort of religious belief?" asked Harry, his hands starting to tingle.

"Well, yeah. The might not worship a god, but they're just substituting magic as the focus of their devotion. I guess that must be very tempting for someone without very much magical strength. Honestly, Harry, did you read the books at all?"

"I skimmed them," said Harry. "But I thought it was more to do with magical theory. Take the soul scans and the cleansing rituals. Those are actual effects."

"It's called the power of suggestion, Harry. You tell people they're going to see shadows in a grey mist in a mirror, and they do. You tell them that after this ritual they don't see the shadows, so they don't. You charge them to perform the rituals on them, and you're in money for the rest of your life."

In a mirror? That must have been a different soul scan. The rituals must have been different, too – the ones he had read about in 'True Grey' hadn't suggested he needed anyone to officiate them.

"Perhaps if we try it and see for ourselves..."

"I did try it already, Harry, and there was no effect whatsoever. It's all mumbo-jumbo, Harry. You shouldn't be so easily taken in by things."

Harry felt his certainty waver but then reform. He had not being imagining things. Not about the pain of the ritual, and not about the change in his soul scan. After all, if it was the power of suggestion, he would have seen the effect of the Patronus as a _white_ mark. He remembered Moody's comment that most people would never be powerful enough for it to matter, and abruptly realised that most probably meant that Hermione had never cast a spell strong enough for it to show in her scan.

He would have no person beyond the memory of his brother. He would just have to honour him by never allowing his soul to become corrupted the way so many of the powerful wizards he knew seemed to. He had sacrificed his sibling to the purity of soul, and now had the duty to maintain it. And maintain it, he would.

THE END


	2. Plans B-Z

**Plans B-Z**

******Disclaimer:**** I **own nothing, make no money from anything, and am writing this purely for personal enjoyment.

******Summary:** Harry decides that having back-up plans might be a good idea. And maybe back up plans for those back up plans. Just because everyone else runs on hope doesn't mean he has to.

* * *

Harry stared at the ceiling in Privet Drive. Dumbledore was dead. Dumbledore was dead. Dumbledore was dead, and had left the whole fate of the war in Harry's hands, and Harry hadn't the faintest clue how he was expected to go about fighting it. Instead of taking action, tracking down Horcruxes or taking the reins of the Order of Phoenix, he was hiding here where no one was looking at him with hope in their eyes.

Oh, he had told everyone – he believed himself, come to that – that he needed to remain here for the first part of the summer so that the blood wards could be recharged. But in a few weeks, that would be done, and he still wouldn't have the slightest idea how he was supposed to succeed at his task.

No one had been surprised at his nightmares. Harry, therefore, hadn't felt the need to tell them they were more than that. It was like Dumbledore had been a charm keeping his mind safe (and given the way the Wizarding World worked, Harry wasn't discounting that possibility). Now, every time Harry closed his eyes, he could see what Voldemort was doing. And what Voldemort was doing was replacing horcruxes. It seemed that seven wasn't the total number Voldemort wanted to make, oh no. Seven was the number Voldemort wanted to _have_. He had found out about the destroyed horcruxes hard on the heels of Dumbledore's death, and had been doing something about it.

One went into a table knife that had a compulsion charm on it to be stolen and taken them home. A knife identical in every way in a set of forty-nine. If the time came for Voldemort to possess someone again, it would be close at hand to some witch or wizard, but to find it would be a practical impossibility. It would take more luck than even Harry Potter was willing to believe in. Another was placed in a statue, which was itself placed in a highly warded and then physically insulated box, and then had been dropped deep into the ocean by an imperioused muggle. This one was intended to keep the main wraith form from ever passing on, rather than a vector for possession. With the negative effect large bodies of water had on magic, this one was out of reach until the land rose from the sea.

So the systematic destruction of all the horcruxes just wasn't going to happen. He would have to find another solution. _Think, Potter_, he told himself. _Use those problem solving abilities. Take inspiration from those blasted self-improvement tapes of Uncle Vernon's and think outside the box._

He grabbed a piece of paper and drew two columns – 'Things that kill souls' and 'Things that kill everything'. In the first column he wrote down 'Dementor', and in the second 'The Veil' and 'Avada Kadavra'. He wasn't sure either of the last two would reliably destroy a soul, but this was a starting point for research. Then he allowed his imagination to roam free. 'Lethifolds or other dark creatures'. 'Zombie infection'. (Harry had no idea if zombies even existed, but everything else seemed to, so why not.) Wait, wasn't Voodoo supposed to be all about control of the soul? He added that. Or was that a duplicate of zombie infection? Nevermind. 'Purification rituals'. Oh, new column – 'Trap soul'! That one took 'Petrification', 'Permanent Transfiguration', 'Brain Damage', and 'Magic Drain'. Another column, 'Convert Voldemort'? Yeah, that certainly met the criteria of out the box. Harry added purification rituals to that one as well, then followed it up with 'Imperious', 'Magical equivalent of anti-depressents', and 'Honest negotiation for peaceful solution'. Maybe a section of 'Make Voldemort ineffective' to put the idea 'Convert all of Voldemort's followers' into. That can also take 'invent a shield against the Unforgivables' and 'create an Anti-Voldemort ward.'

Harry could feel his spirits slowly start to lift. He had more than a dozen possibilities, and he'd only been working on this half an hour. Give Hermione a month, and they'd be able to pick and chose their favourite method from scores. Ways Voldemort would never see coming. Wizards, after all, didn't have an ounce of logic between them.

* * *

**OMAKE: Critiquing the 'polyjuice and fly' plan**

"I should never have agreed for you to take my hair. Maybe if we'd sat down—"

"We had no other choice, Harry."

"Of course we had other choices! I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head. I could have used my invisibility cloak to get to Arabella Figg's and used her floo. I could have been polyjuiced as Dudley and taken a bus—"

"The Knight Bus is—"

"A _muggle_ bus, Remus. I could have taken a _muggle_ bus to a neutral place where I could have been side-alonged. We could have put the location of the house under Fidelius and stayed where we were. We could have left _last _month and simply walked out. We could have all polyjuiced into Death Eaters. We could have made a portkey that would take me to another portkey."

"They would have caught the portkey maker, remember? Anyone we asked would have had to go into hiding."

"Earlier today you yelled at me for not committing murder, and now you're getting squeamish about breaking a rigged regulation? What was it you were saying? The time for worrying about things like that has passed, Remus. What is wrong with you?"

"We don't know that any of those options would have gone any better."

"No, because we didn't take the time to plan it out properly. But like I said, I know its my fault too. I just went along with the flow when I knew it was a bad idea. We all made the same mistake. But not again. I'm not doing anything that has not been properly examined and has multiple back up plans in place. As bad as it was, it really deserved to go a lot worse. When the groups missed their portkeys, they had no alternative ways out of the situation. If Voldemort had split his forces and followed them, they would have all been trapped."

"Or followed right back here."

"Yes. Like I said, we got lucky. We need to step up our game if we want to keep playing with the big boys. We owe it to Mad-Eye and George."

* * *

**OMAKE: Critiquing the 'walk out and die' plan**

"I don't have some sort of Horcrux detector in my pocket, how am I supposed to find out where they all are? Even Voldemort doesn't know where they all are! And after that, what? Was I just supposed to wander in front of an Avada Kedavra and hope Voldemort died too? Because as far as I can tell, that's the whole of Dumbledore's plan. And excuse me, _but that's a crap plan_."

Snape clenched his fists, and Harry back pedalled out of reach.

"The Headmaster cared for you, and I will not have you suggesting anything else."

"Yes, sir," said Harry sullenly. He didn't agree, but he didn't want to get into another argument. Dumbledore had just given him weird, time-wasting instructions... "Wait!"

"What?"

"Well, you know how I told Hermione and Ron to search Hogwarts for one of the Horcruxes to keep them out of the way? I mean, I'd be thrilled if they found one, but it isn't part of my pl—"

"Get on with it."

"What if this whole thing of searching for Horcruxes was just _Dumbledore's_ plan to keep me out of the way of the actual battle? What if he never expected me to succeed?"

"It would explain why you were told to keep it between you and the two idiots."

Harry ignored the insult. "If Dumbledore really thought this was the only possible way to defeat Voldemort, then the whole order should have been focusing on it. Or at very least some of his unspeakable contacts. Not three kids how haven't even taken their NEWTs."

"So what was the Headmaster's plan, then?"

"I don't know. Maybe he thought the adults would come up with something themselves."


	3. The Language of Kings

**The Language of Kings**

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, make no money from anything, and am writing this purely for personal enjoyment.

**Summary:** After the war, Harry discovers the Wizarding World is larger than the fairground mirror of middle-class England he'd been exposed to.

* * *

Harry was starting to know the school library very well. It wasn't as if there was anything else for him to do. Voldemort was dead. Ron was dead. Hermione was dead. Hell, even that prick Draco Malfoy was dead. And he was stuck here for another few months until he finished his schooling. Reading might not have been his passion, but it helped to fill the hours between waking up and falling asleep.

At the moment, though, he was having no luck. At last, with reluctance, he approached Madame Pince.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

Do we have any books by Octavius Vetus? I can't seem to find..."

"Of course we don't, boy. Why would you want to read anything of his?"

"One of his books was referenced in _Wizarding Communities and Strongholds_ and I thought..."

"I'm sure you can find more suitable resources. Don't let me find you suggesting such things again."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Harry as he retreated rapidly to the back shelves.

Harry was amazed by the reaction. Octavius Vetus didn't write about dangerous magic like many of the books he _was_ allowed access to; he was a historian. What possible reason could Madame Pince have to react so badly? At first he shrugged it off and picked up something else, but more and more, his mind came back to this little mystery. For the first time in a long time, he felt something through his haze. Hermione would have wanted this solved. He'd do it for her.

It was disappointingly easy to obtain the books. He was of age, well-off, and with many contacts left over from the war. Of course, it helped that the books weren't illegal in themselves, it was simply a matter of smuggling them past Dumbledore and the rest of the staff. He had no idea if they shared Madame Pince's opinion, but he wasn't going to take the chance. Within weeks he had them in front of him. They were charmed to look like something else, but everyone had stopped noticing him reading a long time ago. He picked the most likely title, _Modern Magical Missteps_, and settled in. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.

_The extreme stratification of Wizarding society in Britain can be almost solely attributed to the work of Albus Dumbledore [note 8]. Since Dumbledore's publicly stated goals [note 9] have consistently been for greater social mobility, it is of some debate about whether his actions demonstrate duplicity or incompetence. A prime example for both sides is his abolishment of the Tirocinius tradition and the accompanying teaching of the 'Gestus Dare' when he was appointed Headmaster. While it was true that muggleborns were poorly represented amongst those chosen, preventing it from being learnt by the older-blooded yeomen simply served to strip _them_ of the opportunities to interact with ranking members of society as well. With the sole exception of the diminished Prince line, no ranking member has ever sent their children to Hogwarts, and subsequent to this decision they have confined their interactions to the few of the older merchanting families that are rumoured to apprentice their children amongst themselves – the Malfoys, the Blacks, the Crouches, and so on [note 11]. Dumbledore, perhaps as a result of the irregularities of his upbringing, was not chosen himself as a Tiro nor presented at any royal enclave. Dumbledore apologists claim that this is evidence of his ignorance and postulate that he believes the Wizarding nobility to be as defunct as the muggle [note 12]. Dumbledore detractors claim this is evidence he is systematically reducing the opportunties of the new-bloods. But whether his actions were intentional or misguided, few people outside of his immediate sphere of influence would disagree that this action, more so than any other, has led to the current social tension in Britain._

Well, that certainly explained why his work wasn't welcome in Hogwarts. And it might explain how the Malfoy's seemed to be so immune from prosecution. But was this guy a deranged nut-case, or a dispassionate theoretician? Harry just didn't know enough about the topic to judge – he had never even heard of Wizarding nobility. He flipped to the reference section and wrote down further books to order.

After a great deal of reading, Harry found himself more confused than he had been before. The Wizarding nobility ruled absolutely, but by consent. They left the merchanting class to their own devices, but they kept control of everything. They were apart from the rest of the Wizarding world, but they were the Wizarding world. Nevertheless, in this weird system of feudal rights and responsibilities, Harry saw a third option. The muggle world would no longer have a place for him, the merchanting Wizarding world's place (securely under Dumbledore's thumb) was untenable, but maybe this...

There weren't a great deal many books about the 'Gestus Dare', but what there was was enough to scare him. With some quite unconscious gestures, he could accidentally solicit someone for sex or declare war on their bloodline. His normal posture, it turned out, was a mild insult and he suddenly understood all the accusations of arrogance from the older-blooded families. He wasn't sure whether they had thought he was doing it deliberately, or whether interpreting the language became automatic enough that it was impossible to 'unhear' the sensible from the gibberish. Either way, he needed to do better, and he wasn't going to be able to do this from books. Not with any hope of success.

It took more work than ordering the books had, but eventually he had contact details. He'd tracked down one of the people who had organised the Tirocinus tradition before Dumbledore had become headmaster. He dithered for a long time over the letter, but eventually decided being the Hero of the Wizarding World had to have some advantages. If 'The Harry Potter' returned to the old ways, it would have a huge impact on public opinion. Under the circumstances, he didn't think any enthusiast would be too particular about his word choices.

_... since the Tirocinus tradition has been done away with at Hogwarts, is there any alternative apprenticing system? Or, barring that, would it be possible for me to learn the basics of the 'Gestus Dare' and the accompanying etiquette? I hope you will excuse my presumption in contacting you in this manner,_

_Harry Potter_

It would do.

* * *

**Author notes:** I intended to turn this into a multi-chaptered story about Harry becoming Snape's apprentice, and Snape using the opportunity to quit Hogwarts and take up his abandoned family line in a royal enclave. However, I ended up using most of the ideas for a different story (not yet posted), leaving this opening orphaned. Free to a good home :)

**OMAKE 1: The money, to start with**

Now that he looked at it, Harry could see where he had gone wrong. Ten percent was supposed to be a statement on the Tiro's side – that they took the honour very seriously. It was not meant to be a significant sum to the royal in question. But with the Black fortune tied up away from Voldemort's control, and all the amounts he had inherited from the now-defunct branches of the Potters, ten percent of his wealth was likely many times Snape's total. This was no longer a token; this was a serious complication in power.

**OMAKE 2: The money, to be getting on with**

"But how do Royal Families _get_ money, then?"

"Ah, there we come to one of the hypocrisies our society has slipped into. You can not sell your services, but you can and _should_ take on reciprocal duties with others. And one of those duties can be a duty of tribute."

"Huh? How do you tell the difference?"

"Mostly, in comes down to timing. For instance, if I make up a set of healing potions, and someone gives me a sum of money for that, it's selling. If I take a duty of physical care for someone, and make sure they always have whatever they need to remain healthy, while they take a duty of tribute, and send me a certain percentage at various intervals, it's not. As a guide, if you have to rely on honour for each party to complete their side of the agreement, it's permissible."


End file.
